Over the past six decades federal regulatory agencies have attempted different strategies to regulate the natural gas industry in the United States. All have been unsuccessful, resulting in nationwide gas shortages or massive gas surpluses and costing the nation scores of billions of dollars. In addition, partial deregulation has led the regulatory agency to become more involved in controlling individual transactions among gas producers, distributors, and consumers.

In this important book, Paul MacAvoy demonstrates that no affected group has gained from these experiments in public control and that all participants would gain from complete deregulation. Although losses have declined with partial deregulation in recent years, current regulatory practices still limit the growth of supply through the transmission system. MacAvoy’s history of the regulation of natural gas is a cautionary tale for other natural resource or network industries that are regulated or are about to be regulated.

Paul W. MacAvoy is Williams Brothers Professor of Management Studies and former dean of the School of Management, Yale University.

"An important addition to the literature that will be valuable to many different types of readers. MacAvoy’s analysis is easily accessible and convincing."—Richard J. Pierce, Jr., George Washington University Law School

“[A] masterful analysis. . . . This volume displays a skillful integration of statistical techniques and an enormous knowledge of the institutional setting, and it continues MacAvoy’s superb analysis of this industry appearing in a series of publications over 40 years.”—Choice

“MacAvoy’s history of the regulation of natural gas is a cautionary tale for other natural resource or network industries that are regulated or are about to be regulated.”—Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society